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EVENTS

So guys and gals, my absence has no doubt been noticed and I apologize for that. Long story short, I got a job at an Austin software start up recently, a company well along in its early development that has gone from a few dozen to several hundred workers in the last three years. The firm held a successful IPO a few months ago and expanded significantly. It is considered among the top five best places to work in town and, more and more, in the entire country. This is a demanding job, it was super hard to get in, it’s the toughest job I’ve ever had in terms of what I do, what I’ve had to learn already, and the massive amount of stuff that remains for me to learn.

In brief, we work with medium-sized companies in a growing retal and commercial sector providing a virtual environment for end users that is, bar none and hands down, the best in the business. There’s a reason why this firm has grown leaps and bounds over the past five years. My understanding is we are actively looking to bring a few more people in. I was told by a recruiter there is a particular need for implementation engineers, storage architects, security experts, UI artists with graphics design experience (HTML, XML, CSS, Java), project managers who can tie all that together across multiple sub-departments, and developers of several stripes. This isn’t an internship or a temp summer gig: this is a hit the ground running, full-time, ready to relocate if need be and work at the highest performance level kind of opportunity. But don’t be intimidated either, they hire all ages, all backgrounds, many occupations. My take is the number one thing they’re looking for right off the bat in a phone screen or interview is pure, raw intelligence. Use the contact info posted in the corner if you would like to chat more about it, or try darksydothemoon at good ole AOL hell. Put “job” in the subject line. More below.[Read more…]

I’ve been a network admin who dealt with email specifically, and I’ve worked a Wall Street job that was highly regulated. Both vantages inform me that there’s a good reason why people would want to control their emails: they don’t want other people being able to go through them. [Read more…]

Political orientation can certainly have an effect on whether or not Americans accept science. But a new study shows it’s another specific belief system that causes the most anti-science skepticism. Take a wild guess what it is … [Read more…]

I was just realizing what an impact the character Spock had on my young life and probably others. I was too young to enjoy the series when it aired, but syndication did the trick. Spock was the first person on TV I can recall who made being a science “nerd” cool and being markedly different admirable.

BTW the video played slowly and choppy for me, and MSNBC is by no means the only streaming site that has these problems. I have no idea why major media organizations can’t do better. But I’ll take a wild guess and assume it has to do with money.

February 20, the day of my birth. That’s right, I made it another year! And while grats are great and a poor guy like me would never turn down a birthday shekel or two sent to my paypal lifeline using Darksydothemoon/at/aol-dot-com, what I’d really like someday is an nice, iCar! In that vein, as oil prices edge higher amid growing Middle East tension and US fossil fuel production grapples with price volatility and safety concerns, one entrepreneur has offered up a possible, intriguing new piece of what our future, collective energy solution might look like:

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, announced Wednesday that the company is working on a new kind of battery that would be used to power homes. Based on Tesla’s lithium-ion battery technology, the new battery is expected to help the company become a leader in the growing home energy-storage market.

At this moment, many solar or wind-powered homes have to remain on a the grid because there has not been a way to store extra power for lean hours. If given a relatively cheap and reliable battery to hold the power needed, building off-grid in the country will become commonplace …

Generation capacity in alternative energy including solar has grown dramatically over the last decade or two. But longer term storage of energy in general remains an issue for designers. Especially in places like this week’s wintery Northeast, where peak energy consumption often coincides with lower levels of alternative production and traditional distribution headaches.

New reports suggest that Apple is developing an electric and possibly driverless iCar to rival Google and Tesla. Apple are poaching Tesla employees with Elon Musk admitting Apple are offering a $250k signing bonus and a 60% pay increase. There have also been sightings in the US of Apple registered cars with some interesting tech attached to them.

Graeme Wood at The Atlantic has posted a powerful, comprehensive introduction to ISIS which reviews the nascent movement’s recent history, stated goals, and current status. It is highly recommended for anyone with even casual interest, and especially to those concerned we may we well be in the middle of a real war here shortly. The short cliff-note version is that ISIS is a real brand of fundamentalist Islam working to bring ancient values, from over a thousand years ago, in to all aspects of their modern culture culminating in a war of civilizations. The final battle — or one of the final battles — will occur near a Syrian town near the Turkish border, where Jesus Christ himself will ride to the rescue of the good Islamic guys and join the fight against the evil might of vast Roman armies:[Read more…]

When you live long enough you see the same thing over and over again, sometimes in a slightly different package, too often in the same old wrapper. This is true for human interest stories and it’s the same with the Greatest Threat on Earthtm. Even in the pre 9-11 era, the latter kinds of threat seemed to somehow pop up every few years, although the fallout from Vietnam and a Cold War with a credible adversary kept us cautious for a couple of decades. But after Sept 11, 2001, that caution was long gone. Even the hard-earned second thoughts from the ill-conceived Iraq War has worn off remarkably fast. And these ISIS clowns want us and anyone else they can get in this war real bad: [Read more…]

Why do politicians venture to London like it was an epic journey to the North Pole, where glorious foreign policy cred awaits ye who plants his banner in the middle of Downing Street? Because that hasn’t gone well in the last few years, especially for the GOP, and it has already started off on a small snag even for the careful, bland likes of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: [Read more…]

The universe it seems is not without a sense of humor. At least that’s one conclusion a person might draw from this very real image of a distant galaxy cluster bent by the gravity of a nearer cluster into a cosmic smiley face: [Read more…]